Getting ripped off in a taxi is nothing new. While there may be some good trustworthy drivers in the city, there might be more drivers lurking around hoping to make quick bucks with some tricks up their sleeves. You can sigh a little as the Metropolitan Traffic Police Division’s recent campaign against meter tampering in taxis has revealed quite some amount. This screams for better regulation and tighter punishment to the taxi drivers. Then again, when the traffic cops are the ones easily taking the bribe – we might as well lose the little hope we had (if you haven’t lost it already). “Meter Earthing” is the all “new” fantastic way that some taxi drivers have been using to get more money off your purse. Having read upon what meter earthing is, all I can say is – I thought we all knew this…
It’s basically a piece of wire that runs from the taxi meter to somewhere more near to the taxi driver such as the horn, radio or the indicator lights. For example, if you are being charged Rs 6 per 200 meters then each time the driver presses on the horn/ touches the radio etc then the fare will be increasing by Rs 6 each time. I am a little amused that this is the latest “discovery”. I’m sure I am not the only one aware of such tricks. You may be glad to know that the team have taken action against over 300 cabbies in the valley with fines slapped between Rs 2000 – Rs 5000.
One thing I was worried about before my trip to Mumbai was the meters on the taxis and the auto-rickshaws. Amazingly, I was so impressed with their system there. Each driver carried a rate-card and unlike in Kathmandu drivers did not demand a fixed rate to travel to certain destinations. I also heard that this new change and the crackdown was quite recent too… there is still hope. To wrap this post up, this brings me to share a video that I did few years ago, Driver Dai from Lex in Nepal.
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